Welcome to The Wedding CEO Podcast, where we discuss all things marketing, sales, and scaling, so you can become the CEO of your life and business. I'm Alora Rachelle, and I've been a wedding photographer for over a decade, and now I'm sharing all of my secrets so you can stop sacrificing your time and make more money like a CEO.

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Hi, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited about this one because I'm passionate about it. If you haven't noticed, I've had a lot of passionate episodes lately and it could be the mushroom coffee, y'all. It's changed my life. I don't want to be an influencer, but just everyday dose. It is so good and if you want the hyper fixation version, then just add it into your Nespresso or your coffee. I can get six hours of work done. Okay. This is not sponsored. It would be if they would give me a code. But I've been on the waiting list for three months. Just purchase it. It's so good. Honestly, it literally keeps me from getting brain fog. This coffee changed everything for me. I can focus. I can get stuff done. It's magic. 

Anyway, I came across a YouTube short where somebody was talking about the new beauty trends and if you're on the internet at all I guess you'll be aware that there's this new trend called The Mob Wife because I guess it was Clean Girl. Then before that I don't know what was before The Clean Girl.

Personally, I've been a clean girl all my life. But I recently didn't even understand the beauty of skincare until the pandemic. I dove into skincare and I am in my glazed donut era forever. I go to sleep like a donut. I wake up like a donut. I'm a donut. I need a donut sweatshirt now. It needs to be glazed.  If somebody could find a sweater like this, could you DM it to me on Instagram and I will send you a million heart emojis because wow, this is a great idea. 

Anyway, we're going to talk about trend chasing in the industry and why it's something we need to stop doing. Honestly, this doesn't really apply so much to business as it does for your own mental health, but they both go hand in hand because you are the business, the business is you, you get the idea. So what I've noticed  is that every five to ten years, trends are going to shift for every category of your life. For me, it's interior design. I've always been a bold girl. I've always liked moody colors. If you follow me on my Instagram story, you see me painting a room, probably once a week. But I painted my son's room and his room was like this. It's actually not that bold, but it's the perfect green. When you see a green leaf with a little bit of sage in there, my son has the perfect dinosaur color green in his room. I love that room. My daughter has this gorgeous deep mauve pink that she picked out. So right now the trend is bold colors, moody vibes. But I've always liked that. So I have to check in with myself when I'm purchasing pink colors or trying to decide how I'm gonna decorate my home. Because, I need to stay true to myself and not just do this because I seen it on Pinterest, because I seen it on Instagram and TikTok and what have you.

Trend chasing, it doesn't just apply with the wedding industry, it applies to everything. That goes back to what I was saying about The Mob Wife versus The Clean Girl. I don't know what the mob wife is. I just saw like a fluffy coat and is that it? What is a mob wife? Somebody tell me. For me personally, I've always made a point to be like, do I want this? Because I want it. Do I like it? Am I gonna use it? Or am I being influenced? I'm trying to de-influence myself. 

We need to also do this inside of your business when you're deciding on the way that your brand looks, when you're deciding on the content you want to create, the pictures you want to capture, when you're deciding whether or not you want to blend in because everybody's doing it, you want to feel a part of something, or are you going to do the risky thing and fearlessly stand out? This is my top three reasons why you don't want to build your house on an industry trend. 

Number one, your business is going to have rebrand whiplash. I just made it up, so if you hear it, it came from Alora. Just stamp it and be like, Alora said it first.

Rebrand whiplash is a real thing, especially as photographers, because we are visualists, we are creatives, and we love a rebrand. We will spend so much more money on our rebrand than our lenses and SD cards because it's how we look as a creative, what we put out there. The photos we create, we get the brand essence in a way. But for photographers, it's kind of hard to hear that they're just having a thoughtless rebrand. But a lot of times photographers do. As someone who got a rebrand anywhere between every six months to a year, it was so often I didn't even know what I was doing. I was just like, you know what? I just want a Navy website. You know what? I just want a white website. You know what? You get the idea. 

When you build your house in an industry trend, you'll find yourself rebranding based on what everybody else is doing. When you see your friends launching a rebrand, when you see your friends hiring this website designer, hiring this copywriter, and everything. It's like shiny object syndrome, basically. We're just like, well, I need to rebrand. It's about that time. Some of us would just say, Hey, I've been in business two years. I'm going to rebrand. Maybe you're not giving strategic influence. Maybe you're just throwing stuff out there and be like, this is the stuff that I like. Make something happen with this and none of it was done with intention. If anybody knows anything about a rebrand, it's at least five figures. I don't know anybody who spent less than five figures on a rebrand.

I think my best rebrand was $10,000. Copywriter, brand shoot, website, the whole shebang. It's not something you want to spend without intention is all I'm saying. I'm trying to save you money. My advice to you is be more intentional  and ask yourself, do I need a rebrand or do I just need a refresh?

We have a training inside of The Wedding CEO called the rebrand plan. I literally just walk you through like, hey, do you need a rebrand or do you need a refresh? Because if you just rebranded six months ago, maybe we just need to clean some stuff up. Then you can figure out what it is you need to clean. Maybe it's your images. Maybe it's your portfolio. Maybe it's your headshots. I don't know. Whatever the case, you may not need a rebrand. Maybe the bones is pretty good for the website and logo. Maybe we can just clean some stuff up. Maybe we need to change your colors. 

One of my students was like, yeah, my color scheme was pink, and orange, and I hate those colors. I said, babe, why did you do that? Do you know that you see your website all the time? You have to use your font colors and brand colors all the time? That is you, essentially. So, think about that. 

Number two, why I think you should stop trend chasing in the industry is you're gonna lose your identity in the process. Because you don't have one. You're going to find yourself going through the same patterns and then losing your passion for the creative business you built. This is actually in reference to your images. Sometimes when you shoot and maybe like say your first three years, you know, you find yourself in the habit, okay, this is my mental shot list. I'm going to do XYZ, I'm going to do this, I'm going to pose it like that, and eventually you're going to find yourself being like, okay, weddings are getting monotonous. I need to infuse the creativity, but I don't know how. Or maybe you feel scared to, or you can't even possibly get your mind on how exactly you can do that. 

The cinematic editorial is now inside The Wedding CEO. I created this course. This course is my child. I created this course in a week and I literally shoveled out everything, whether it was editorial, natural, artificial lighting, OCF, directing, documentary. Everything that I've ever done. I take you behind the scenes of how I lit up certain situations, how I lit up certain receptions, I walk you through two weddings with me. 

I was at a place, and I think I was five years in, where I didn't really like what I was creating so much anymore. I felt like I was just doing the mental checklist, and then on to the next wedding. Back then I was doing triple headers, so you can tell, like, some of us get into autopilot mode, basically. But then, when my grandma passed, and I saw the world differently, and I finally was unapologetic about documentary photography, I'm like, nope, we're going all in with documentary. 

Being able to tell my couple's unique stories, and play around with things I normally never did, and to finally overcome the reception fear. If anybody can just give me a virtual high five, if you're driving, don't do that. I finally understood what was missing and it was just my client's stories. I could look at any picture on my Instagram and tell you exactly what happened in every single photo. When I stopped caring about, this is a dream venue, which I mean, those things are important.

But when I really started caring about my couple's stories, how they met, who they are when they're together, their vows, just anything. When I fell in love with my clients, when I fell in love with their stories, when I fell in love with what was important to them, their family, their friends, the kids that were at the wedding, if there were, everything changed really. Instead of just looking at somebody's Instagram and being like, okay, I'm going to create that photo, maybe you should just look within your weddings that are already booked and shoot them differently. Don't lose your identity. Don't lose your creative passion. Just go back to "why". Go back to why you're doing this. Go back to what made you pick up a camera in the first place, you know.

Number three is you're going to end up feeling lost in the cycle and pressure to conform when all you really want to do is stand out, but you've been trend chasing for so long. How can you escape the saturated cycle? 

If you haven't listened to that podcast, that's a whole rant on its own. 

I feel like being a trend chaser contributes to the saturated cycle because you're just staying in the loop of rinse and repeat. Instead of looking within your couples, looking within yourself, and then what your brand promise is. Like, what do you stand for and why? What makes you you? Why does your business exist? What do you bring to the table? Can morning pages, free flowing, journaling? 

I invite you, if you haven't already listen to The Brand Story Training and just write the answers to those questions and look at them and be like, I didn't know that about myself before. Because we're so enamored with looking at what everybody else is doing instead of keeping our eyes on our own paper.

That's what I think paying attention to trends does. Instead of being like, 2024 trend is to be The Mob Wife versus The Clean Girl. If that's what you want to do, fine. But me, I'm going to be a clean girl until I die. I've been a clean girl since fifth grade. 

Honestly, what was our life before we knew there were trends? I didn't know there were beauty trends before social media. Were there? Because the only thing we had was magazines, and I'm a millennial, so AOL connection took at least an hour in the sixth grade just for me to complete my computer homework. I was never really influenced, and I think it's so interesting how no matter when you decided to have social media, whenever you have the internet, I feel like it's still hard to de influence because the overconsumption, the consumerism.

We have so much information all the time, and that goes back into like why self care can make you rich. Rich in life, whatever the case, I think it's important because my goodness, there's so much going on and you forget your sense of self. You lose your identity in the process. You get caught up in this cycle of just being everybody else. Maybe I'm honing in on this so much, but I do think that the magic begins when you just decide. 

We did a design your brand session live workshop with our students and The Wedding CEO. I was talking to one of them and I was like, you're so obsessed with the raw and real moments. Why don't you just do a whole brand session with film the way that you deliver your clients photos. Her mouth dropped. If you want people to see you as the expert for the content you create, then your headshot should show that. Why not? Why not do something different? Something you never heard before. I do think that my brain automatically can see things in people and extract that and turn it into a special strategy.

But I just always think everybody has something to bring to the table. Everybody has a unique story. 

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If you don't know, the doors for The Wedding CEO are open and they will be closing on March 7th. If you love this episode, check out the link in the show notes. Also listen to The 100k Class replay. 

If you have any questions, please DM me. I promise. I don't bite.

I will see you in the next episode.